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I was sitting at lunch a few days ago and there was a (probably) four month old baby sitting with its parents at the table beside me. Normally I’d smile happily and get back to eating like a demon, but there was something about the little one that kept catching my attention. The parents held the baby in turns while chatting and kept it occupied by dangling keys, phones, toys and other stuff in front of it.

Each time it saw something new it let out the most adorable gurgle, shaking with laughter when it got it’s hands on the object. It flailed it around in its hands and generally acted like it had won the lottery with each and every thing they gave it. You probably know the feeling, it’s something we’ve all experienced whether we remember it or not. There’s something very special about seeing a baby get that feeling, because it reminds us of the joy in learning or experiencing something new.

There are a few rare things that fill me with that sense of wonder, and the universe is one of them (haha, I know…nothing big).

Recently a new planet was discovered, a very special planet.

Located in the serpens constellation, it was found orbiting a millisecond pulsar which is a neutron star formed from a supernova (a supernova being the event that destroys a star, condensing its entire mass into a smaller entity which produces the neutron star). If that makes as much sense to you as it does to me, to put it simply it means that the star in the system is a super dense star, sending out a beam of electromagnetic radiation which can only be viewed when it points at earth (like a lighthouse) which gives it the ‘pulsar’ name (…as far as I can tell).

But anyway, that’s not terribly important. If it does catch your interest, pick a few astronomy terms out of thin air, make a good cup of coffee, open up a wikipedia tab and run wild…there’s a lot of interesting stuff out there, although it could take a while to wrap your brain around it.

Anyway, usually there’s another star close to these pulsars, which either collide with or become consumed by one another; stripping them of elements with their intense gravity (on a galactic scale that is, not your average “whoah, that ollie you just flipped was tight” intense).

In this case, there seems to have been another star nearby but it wasn’t consumed fully by the pulsar. Instead, it was stripped bare of everything except for carbon and then gently moved itself out to a safe distance.

But, not before the gravity condensed all of the carbon into the planet itself which means that…

Out there somewhere, there’s a diamond planet. Not in the metaphorical “I’m writing this on an iPhone while standing in a field wearing a tin foil helmet screaming ‘E.T. beam me up to a better place; this world is not worthy!’ ” sense, but in the actual literal sense. Carbon, when put under intense pressure, forms into diamond, and in this case all of the carbon was crushed together and formed one hell of a diamond.

Let that sink in: a planet, which is completely a diamond…just incredible.

(it’s not the middle object; that’s the pulsar. It’s the one orbiting around it, and the blue trail is the electromagnetic radiation pulse…the odd spiral of it is caused by the difference between axial rotation and…something or other else…look it up)

It’s five times the size of earth (fuck you deBeers, just fuck you) but 3,000 times larger than the star it orbits. Now it’s not like somebody has actually sauntered up to the planet and knocked a knuckle on it to check for sure, but the studies done by the Swinburne university of technology in Melbourne Australia suggest that this is what happened. Congratulations to those who took part in the study, that’s some find.

I’m too hard on myself, and others. A balance must be struck, but I’ve a horrible tendency to veer too far away from being a ‘nicey-nicey’ type because I believe that it leads to complacency all too easily. BUT, a balance must be struck. Miss by an inch, in either direction, miss by a mile.

I haven’t begun spitting venom, but still there’ve been times when I’ve become a little bit too dismissive or contrary when thinking things through for this page. Luckily enough it hasn’t slipped past me yet (I hope- you guys could think otherwise haha), but still, there’s always a chance.

So i’ve decided; in an effort to keep the balance, and my sanity, to try and do something every friday that could be loosely termed as ‘inspirational’…as much as I don’t like the image that the word brings to mind.

It’s Friday; have a good one. Depending on your circumstances, you could be looking forward to a quiet night in, out, alone or with company or, heaven forbid, not looking forward to any of these possibilities-in which case, read the last line carefully. Very carefully.

Can you dig it?

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(Credit for the design above goes to the person who created it, whoever they were. I just took the picture.)

Hi,

I should start off by saying I discriminate, I discriminate plenty. I don't discriminate based on race, colour, religion, sexual preference, disability, social status or take part in any other narrowminded attempt to boost my own self confidence by judging others lower than me.

I do discriminate at the most basic level though: based on the attitudes, behaviour and actions of people.

It would be great to live in a world where there was no discrimination because we all got along in a "hands across the world" kind of way...but we don't. To help us move along to the ideal world we all want, we Do have to discriminate, discriminate against the bad elements of our behaviour and attitudes, the most basic discrimination possible: good, or bad.

In what will hopefully be a rare use of an inspirational quote, I think this sums it up best:

"To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order;
to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order;
to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life;
we must first set our hearts right."

What do I mean by this? well it's obvious really...get your shit together.